Emma Watson has been off the movie radar for a little while but this week she is back with her new movie The Perks of Being A Wallflower - a completely different role for the actress.
The movie is a big screen adaptation of the novel by Chris Chbosky and sees Watson team up with Logan Lerman and Ezra Miller.
The actress was in London to promote the movie and in the press conference she chatted about what drew her to the film as well as what it was like working with Chbosky.
- This movie really reminded me of the likes of The Breakfast Club and other classic films so do you think that that was what director Chris Chbosky was aiming for when he was making this movie?
Definitely. When we first met he had this… I would call it a Bible of all of the ideas from the book and he knew exactly how he wanted to shoot each shot. There were also tons of John Hughes references in there.
He really wanted it to feel quirky and real but also for there to be something timeless and classic about it - that is why he didn’t go too far on the late eighties early nineties garb; it was there and you could feel it but he didn’t go crazy.
- In preparation did you watch any of those types of films?
I watched Dazed and Confused and he had me watch Harold and Maude, The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, partly for accent and partly for feel.
- Did you read the book first or the script?
I read the script first and the book second. My American friends berated me for this they were like ‘you are so far behind, how can you not have read this amazing book?’ So I got on it very quickly and what I realised is that there is this amazing cult following that really really care about it.
I was in Pittsburgh and a girl came up to me and she had a tattoo of one of Steve’s quotes and that was when I really realised and was like ‘oh wow it’s kind of a big deal’.
And I really put the pressure on myself to get it right. It has been amazing and it is nice to know that we can’t go too far wrong because Steve wrote the book and he is directing the film. Adaptations can never be exactly the same as the book but the spirit would be authentic.
- Do you think that it does make a difference that Steve was directing the adaptation of his own novel?
Pittsburgh is where he grew up and some parts of the book are autobiographical. It was amazing to have him… if I was ever stuck in a scene and I needed help finding a particular moment to have him tell me about that specific moment in his life and how impacted him and what he felt that that line was about was incredibly moving to hear what it all meant to him personally.
I feel spoilt really - going onto future movies I will be like ‘excuse me where is the author of the book/script? I need to speak to them personally.’ It was amazing.
- This is a coming of age film and you are someone who found fame early and came of age in the public eye so how did that inform you performance as Sam?
I don’t know how being in the public eye would have helped with Sam - in fact I think it was the opposite really it’s the life that I had out of the public eye that helped inform Sam.
I tried my best to live my adolescence behind closed doors as much as I could and I think I did manage to do that - I went back to school in between filming, I sat my GCSE’s and A-Levels and I went to university. So it is really those experiences that informed her.
- You are in a great position of being educated both here and in America so what are the major differences? Did you find that in the U.S. parents piled the pressure on their children more at a younger age?
I would have said the opposite. In America you have four years to complete your degree where as in England it is only three - although we do encourage a gap year.
The biggest difference between them I would say is that an American education encourages to broaden yourself out and to concentrate later on where as we are encouraged to make decisions about out career and what we want to go into a lot younger - even as early as our GCSE’s in this country and if you want to go into medicine or whatever you need to choose to take chemistry and biology.
In America I was able to take four classes a semester and they could be in whatever I wanted as long as they formed some sort of concentration out of them.
So I am majoring in English literature but I took classes in psychology, history, art and French and all sorts.
So that was one of the appeals to me as I knew that my degree wasn’t going to be a vocational degree, I wasn’t going to go and study law, but that I wanted to know as much as I could about as many different things as possible.
- During that time didn’t you say don’t send me scripts?
I did, I did but Perks somehow made it under the door. My agent said ‘you should read this one’ and I had been reading things but Perks was the first thing that really lit a fire under me and I was like ‘I think it would really be important to make this film. I think this could really make a difference to a young person watching it’. It felt quite special somehow.
- What was it about the script and the character that really interested you when you read the script for the first time?
I think that there is so much material made about this period in people’s live when you come of age or when you are in high school. There are so many teenage TV series and movies that it is subject matter that people are sick of hearing about.
But this one felt really authentic and honest and it didn’t glamorise the experience but it didn’t patronise it or sensationalise it.
It’s amazing because I look at Steve and think ‘you remember so clearly what it was like to be this age’ it is amazing. It was just the honesty and it was also not afraid to touch on subjects that are difficult.
I think that that is one of the reasons why it was so difficult getting this movie made because the film deals with things that people would rather not talk about - almost like taboo subjects.
It is one of the most banned books in America and there are many state libraries that will not stock this book. That was fascinating to me because I have had a background that was much more open and accepting so that was a real shock.
And it is a shock that no one really wanted to make this film and I had to bang on people’s doors to get it made so that was interesting.
- Did you find making this that you perhaps had lost out a little bit on your own coming of age and going through all those rights of passage? Did you ever find that because of the intensity of the work that you have done over the last decade that you had lost out?
It made me very aware that my life had been very different and it has definitely been unusual. I would almost say that my life has been done backwards slightly (laughs).
There are certain parts of my development that are happening at different times and in a different order and at times that has felt lonely. But I just feel privileged to have so much and to have had so many experiences.
Really the film made me really happy because I realised that I had been doing something for more than half of my life that I wanted to continue doing - I really loved making the movie and I really love acting and it is what I want to do.
So it made me quite grateful that I had a platform that allows me to do that in the way that I would want to.
It was happy because I got to have a lot of the experiences that I didn’t get to have and in an even more exotic way because I got to go to the football games and I don’t know many English girls that get to go to Prom.
- Having worked with Logan Lerman on this movie how great is it to be working with him on Noah? And how is work on that going?
Walking to set and knowing that you are doing a Darren Aronofsky movie and Russell Crowe is there and Anthony Hopkins is coming on set in a couple of days and I really felt the gravity and it felt like a very big thing to be doing.
So to have Logan there who I could share that ‘are you really nervous?’ ‘Yes I am really nervous’ ‘Ok great’ and have that support and continuity as well.
Working with new people all of the time and in different places can be a little disorientating and to be working with the same person again is really nice. It worked out well.
- Music plays a big part in the movie so was there a lot of music on set? And what kind of music do you like?
The first that Steve did when he met me was give me a mixtape. Throughout the movie the cast made music together; I sing, Ezra also sings and plays the drums and Logan plays the piano.
Most nights we would sit and play music - that was really fun. And when we did the tunnel scene we did have music playing.
It is not very often on a movie when you are doing a scene to have that as they put the music in after but Steve insisted that all four of us together chose the song that we would go through the tunnel listening to and it was a song called ‘Happiness’. I listen to The Smiths a lot.
- What did you all sing in your little band because it sounds awesome?
Our band was tentatively called Octopus Jam - I don’t know how we came up with the title. Logan is a classical composer and he composed a piece of music for his part in Perks - he also composed a piece of music for me and for Ezra.
So he was more classical and Ezra is more rock and roll and I was somewhere in the middle doing my own thing really.
- Given your unique upbringing was there anything in the movie such as a relationship that you could identify with and really latch on to?
Unique, I like that. I have a step brother called David who reminded me a lot of my relationship with Patrick in the film. We are the same age and so we sat our GCSE’s together and we sat our A-Levels together and we very much gave each other moral support during that time.
Then it was the close friends that I have really the ones… I don’t know who the quite is by but the friends that you can call at 3am are the ones that really count and I am lucky that I have a few of those.
So I just drew on that and the people that believe in me as they lift you up and it is important to have people around you that do that.
- Do you have a favourite scene in the movie?
Experience wise I love the tunnel scene because I love to remember what it was like to do that - it was incredible. I felt like I was flying and I was so pumped up with adrenaline. It was very memorable for me personally regardless of the film.
The scene that I loved reading when I read the script is the scene when Sam wants to give Charlie the perfect first kiss because her first kiss kind of sucked and a lot of people’s first kisses aren’t great - it isn’t always how you picture things.
I just thought that it was beautiful that she wanted to make sure it was perfect and that really touched me. I was proud of that scene in general.
- How did this movie compare to films and sets that you have been on in the past - you are used to working on blockbuster films?
It was a much smaller crew and a much lower budget. My two biggest scenes we shot in one day.
The ones that I consider to be the most emotional and difficult is the one where I kiss Charlie and the scene at the end of the film the night before I am about to leave and we shot all of that in one day.
On Harry Potter I am use to us shooting one sequence in three weeks so it was nerve wracking for Steve to give me one of two takes.
So I had to really have a lot of faith in him and trust that it was all going to work out ok. It is nice working with a smaller group of people because you really band together and everyone is very involved but you have to be.
We worked crazy hours on it and by the end of the movie I was so tired I was not even functioning properly because we shot so many night shoots. But it was also completely exhilarating.
- You have been attached to Fifty Shades of Grey which is quite a saucy film so if you were to do a movie like that is it something that you would be comfortable with or would you shy away from it?
I must have said this in twenty interviews now but I am not attached to it - I don’t know why this keeps on coming up over and over again.
It is flattering in a sense that people are excited about what I am going to do in the future but I don’t know where this thing is coming from - it’s mental. I can’t seem to shake it.
I haven’t read the book, I haven’t been sent a script, I haven’t been approached and that is all I can say.
Also I have been saying since I was sixteen that if it an interesting character and if it was important for the character development and it is the right role then of course, if it is important to the story, I will do it because I am an actress.
The Perks of Being A Wallflower is released 3rd October
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Emma Watson